[CraigBuchek]

Setting the threshold at 2 seems a bit high to me. It basically requires that (on average) at least 1 person upvotes every comment you make. That's unlikely to happen in a nested thread of back-and-forth conversation. And it's less likely to happen for people that are a little late to the conversation but still have some valid input. I tend to fall into the latter category -- I'm often reading posts that are several days old in my RSS reader.

Setting the threshold around 1.5 might work better. Or perhaps whatever threshold might allow 75% or 80% of readers/contributors to vote.

[jacquesm]

Any threshold is wrong.

Votes are a currency with which users tell each other what their feelings are, setting some arbitrary limit on that ability to express means the underlying system is broken.

Either voting works as a mechanism to identify quality content, or it doesn't.

If voting is to be limited to those that want to engage in group-think (the quickest way to boost your average is to post stuff people will find agreeable) then we'll soon have very bland conversations here.

[elblanco]

I think that my personal problem is that the semantics of voting are usually more related to popular/unpopular instead of quality/poor quality. Not that I have a particular problem with popular/unpopular as the semantics per se, just that that seems to be the way the community uses them (myself included most of the time).